“Good morning,” she murmurs, voice thick and husky with sleep, and my throat’s too tight to return the greeting.
My silence ruins the moment.
It allows enough space for the truth to worm its way in, for both of us to realize this little paradise we’ve made ourselves isn’t going to last.
Seren’s smile fades. Her eyes grow more alert. She pulls away from me and sits up, looking toward the balcony open to the morning sun.
The space she leaves behind is cold. I’d give just about anything to pull her back to me and forget the rest.
“We should get ready,” she says, already moving to slide out from under the furs. “No point in putting it off any longer.”
She’s right.
Every moment we wait, more hunters are likely to put the clues together and look to the human realm. Elijah isn’t safe, the whole of the human realm isn’t safe if there are any intrusions through the Veil, and we’ve got the best chance at stopping that from happening.
As for the possibility of winning a fortune?
It seems small compared to everything else.
With dread sitting heavy on my shoulders, I follow her out of bed and reach for my armor, no part of me even remotely ready to face what’s coming next.
Every single step we take in Faerie feels wrong.
The magick is wrong. The hungry, watchful fae are wrong. Being here is wrong.
Almost as soon as we step through the Veil, fae start coming out of the literal woodwork. Materializing from behind trees, out of the canopy, and rising from the forest floor, they line the winding path to the queen’s bower.
Seren’s hand twitches toward the dagger at her waist. Her eyes scan the forest, taking note of the fae, who seem to be multiplying by the moment.
“Do you think she told them to stand down?”
There’s no need to specify theshe, and truth be told, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have attacked otherwise.
“Seems like,” I mutter, hand never leaving the hilt of my sword.
We’re both well-armed—courtesy of Finn, who wouldn’t hear of us leaving court to come to Faerie without raiding his absent father’s armory.
But how much good steel and witchmagick will do against a court of fae who’d no doubt do their cruel queen’s orders gleefully, I don’t know.
Their restraint holds all the way to the bower. Like some grim, macabre crowd watching a parade of two doomed souls, they keep their unnerving eyes on us all the way to the mouth of the tunnel leading into the queen’s court.
“Watch the sides,” Seren says with grim humor, and the memory of just what those tangled vines and branches can do makes my stomach turn.
Without a conscious thought, my tail reaches for Seren. Banding firmly around her waist, I tug her closer, and thoughshe makes a small, grumbling noise in the back of her throat, she doesn’t move away.
Small victories.
I release her when we reach the heart of the bower, only because we’ll both be able to fight better if we’ve got full control of our limbs and bodies.
Even more fae wait here, the same crowd who came to watch their monarch make her challenge to the hunters.
Today, though, they’re silent.
Eerily, hair-raisingly silent as they watch us pass beneath the great domed canopy of death, all the way to the foot of the dais where the queen waits and watches.
Her eyes narrow as she takes us in, no doubt wondering what madness brought us back here without her heart. Her lips curl into a cruel, humorless smile, showing rows of sharp, pointed teeth stained a deep, rotten red.
My stomach falls to my feet and my heart leaps into my throat.
